UM $50K Business Plan Competition Winners Announced

Winners were chosen among nine finalist teams in three categories during an event on April 27. Each team gave investor presentations to a team of distinguished judges. Every team won prize money.

Faculty and Graduate Student Division

Accelign, a biomedical company developing a hardware accelerator that quickly fuses or “registers” medical images from multiple sources to accurately create a single three-dimensional image, took first place, winning $10,000. “The competition offered valuable mentorship and advising for our business,” said Accelign CEO Dr. William Plishker, a research associate at the University of Maryland. “We plan to leverage the competition to launch our product.” Accelign team members also include CTO Professor Raj Shekhar and electrical and computer engineering graduate students Omkar Dandekar and Yashwanth Hemaraj.

BioFactura Inc, a biopharmaceutical development company focused on solving unmet medical and national security needs in the infectious disease arena, tied for third place, winning $2,500. BioFactura team members include: Darryl Sampey, bioengineering graduate student (May '10), and Alex Matschiner; and Luis Branco.

SD Nanosciences, a spin-off of the University of Maryland with a proprietary “Triad” technology that has applications in vaccines, cancer diagnostics, and specialty research probes, tied for third place, winning $2,500. SD Nanosciences team members include: Philip DeShong professor of chemistry and biochemistry; Daniel Stein, professor of cell biology and molecular genetics; Terry Chase Hazell.

Young Alumni Division

Aid Networks, a seed stage medical device company developing small, portable, wireless, wearable vital sign monitors, took first place, winning $10,000. Aid Networks team members include a computer engineering and Hinman CEOs alumna; David Crawford, a computer engineering major and Hinman CEOs student; and Leo Selavo, a research associate at the University of Virginia.

The competition, now in its seventh year, has historically awarded a total of $385,000 in prizes to faculty, students and alumni with the best plans for innovative ventures. Previous winners include Chesapeake Perl, AnthroTronix, Squarespace, Affiliate Classroom, and RioRey (previously known as Macrophage).

For a complete list of winners, and more photos, please visit the UM $50K Business Plan Competition Web site, at http://www.bpc.umd.edu.

MTECH Ventures, an initiative of the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute in the A. James Clark School of Engineering, provides cutting-edge entrepreneurship education to technology creators and stimulates venture creation by delivering a portfolio of services and resources to entrepreneurs committed to bridging the gap between technical ideas and viable ventures.